For his new recording of this monument to Bach, John Eliot Gardiner is limited to a light chamber orchestra (obviously the English Baroque Soloists, founded here 37 years ago by Gardiner!), a choir of reasonable size (the Monteverdi Choir, same remark…), and a meticulous – but above all, calm – conducting of the articulations, phrases and lines, almost like a kind of chamber opera. The tempos are rather upbeat, like baroque music back in its heyday – the perfect balance between respecting history and the quest for beauty of sound. Gardiner has nothing dogmatic – making this new recording a particularly welcome perspective among the ample discography(yet unsatisfactory) of this Mass en si.